In this important new collection, her first in fourteen years, award-winning author Louise Erdrich has selected poems from her two previous books of poetry, Jacklight and Baptism of Desire , and has added nineteen new poems to compose Original Fire . “Erdrich is profoundly sensual, frankly bawdy and slyly comedic.” - Booklist “Essential reading for fans of Erdrich’s fiction, this volume can be expected to draw poetry readers into the fold.” - Library Journal (starred review) “Poems of sweet gratitude, voluptuous ecstasy, cutting satire, seething grief, and fiery resolve.” - Booklist “Artistically impressive and highly entertaining ORIGINAL FIRE …is highly literary poetry born out of a deep, even primal, need to speak as only poetry can, from the heart of individual experience as well as from the center of community.” - Miami Herald “The poems are hypnotic and retain an emphatic passionate fire.” - Los Angeles Times Book Review “Artistically impressive and highly entertaining.” - Miami Herald In this important new collection, her first in fourteen years, award-winning author Louise Erdrich has selected poems from her two previous books of poetry, Jacklight and Baptism of Desire , and has added nineteen new poems to compose Original Fire . Louise Erdrich , a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, is the award-winning author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore. Excerpt Jacklight The same Chippewa word is used both for flirting and hunting game, while another Chippewa word connotes both using force in intercourse and also killing a bear with one's bare hands. - R. W. Dunning, Social and Economic Change Among the Northern Ojibwa (1959) We have come to the edge of the woods, out of brown grass where we slept, unseen, out of knotted twigs, out of leaves creaked shut, out of hiding. At first the light wavered, glancing over us. Then it clenched to a fist of light that pointed, searched out, divided us. Each took the beams like direct blows the heart answers. Each of us moved forward alone. We have come to the edge of the woods, drawn out of ourselves by this night sun, this battery of polarized acids, that outshines the moon. We smell them behind it but they are faceless, invisible. We smell the raw steel of their gun barrels, mink oil on leather, their tongues of sour barley. We smell their mothers buried chin-deep in wet dirt. We smell their fathers with scoured knuckles, teeth cracked from hot marrow. We smell their sisters of crushed dogwood, bruised apples, of fractured cups and concussions of burnt hooks. We smell their breath steaming lightly behind the jacklight. We smell the itch underneath the caked guts on their clothes. We smell their minds like silver hammers cocked back, held in readiness for the first of us to step into the open. We have come to the edge of the woods, out of brown grass where we slept, unseen, out of leaves creaked shut, out of hiding. We have come here too long. It is their turn now, their turn to follow us. Listen, they put down their equipment. It is useless in the tall brush. Continues... Excerpted from Original Fire by Louise Erdrich Copyright © 2004 by Louise Erdrich. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. Copyright © 2004 Louise Erdrich All right reserved.